Volume #1 in the series Critical Responses®
The Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson burst into public awareness when he opposed "the compulsory use of newfangled gender-pronouns". He has since published two best-selling books, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life (2021), and has become the leading public intellectual on social media.
Peterson has an almost cult-like following. Although he arouses strong passions both for and against his points, there has been very little focused, objective criticism of his provocative views on a wide variety of topics: the role of religion, the alleged need for more value and meaning in the modern world, the way young people should conduct their lives, the history of Marxism and postmodernism, male-female relations; the interpretation of Bible stories, the inevitability of hierarchy and inequality, and the application of Jungian archetypes.
Jordan Peterson: Critical Responses brings together new and searching criticisms of various specific aspects of Peterson’s ideas. Though on balance decidedly critical, the authors represent a range of different backgrounds and philosophical assumptions, and the criticisms are fair and temperate, eschewing the personal attacks which have marred many of the pronouncements of Peterson’s opponents.
Volume 1 in the series, Critical Responses®, edited by Sandra Woien
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Jordan Peterson: Critical Responses
ISBN: 978-1-63770-012-9
This book is also available as an e-book (978-1-63770-013-6).
Library of Congress Control Number 2021941768
To Saoirse, my unparalleled delight
Contents
Acknowledgments 000
Arguing about Jordan Peterson 000
Part I The Culture Warrior
1. Jordan Peterson, Secular Priest--Alex Brocklehurst
2. Confronting the New Puritans--Ron Dart
3. What Jordan Peterson Should Have Said about Marxism--David Gordon and Ying Tang
4. Does Jordan Peterson’s Appeal to Authenticity Make Him a Hypocrite?--Madeline Shield
5. Not an Anti-Feminist Per Se--Luis Felipe Bartolo Alegre and Fabiola Valeria Cárdenas Maldonado
Part II The Storyteller
6. Clean Up Your Theory!--David Ramsay Steele
7. Stone, Stone-Soup, and Soup--Marc Champagne
8. The Masculine and Feminine of God--Katie Skurja
9. Biblical Lilliputians Meet Gulliver--Ron Dart
Part III The Truth Seeker
10. Jordan Peterson’s Religious Facts and Values--Stephen Hicks
11. We’re Science! We’re All about Coulda, Not Shoulda--Mark Garron
12. Missing God--Esther O’Reilly
13. Jordan Peterson on Postmodernism, Truth, and Science--Panu Raatikainen
Part IV The Philosopher
14. Are We Made for Happiness?--Tristan Rogers
15. How Jordan Peterson Explains Human Behavior--David Dennen
16. Could Jordan Peterson Be a Stoic?--Sandra Woien
17. The Musical Mediation of Order and Chaos--David Cotter
18. On Peterson’s Truth--Teemu Tauriainen
Bibliography
About the Authors
Index